Point 1: the Advocacy API for Convio was recently released and will enable you to put together all sorts of innovative campaigns that post to Convio’s Advocacy module. Facebook, mobile devices, text messaging, and more – pretty much whatever you can dream up.

Point 2: we wanted to showcase one of the neat ways we thought up that you can use the Advocacy API to make grassroots organizing easier. Case in point: a clean “mobile recruiter” form that you can access via an iPad or smartphone.

Point 3: in the last 5 years, the Convio Summit has been located variously in DC, Austin, and Baltimore. We’re already committed to Baltimore in 2011, as well.

Point 4: what’s an advocacy example without an actual target and action? Not much of an example, that’s what. So we came up with an audacious scheme. Let’s convince Gene Austin to allow the people to vote on the location of the Convio Summit in 2012.

So that’s what we cooked up – a mobile recruiter form accessible via smartphones and iPads that uses the Convio Advocacy API to target Gene with a message of voting. (It’s a nice tie-in the week before the USA actually goes to the polls for a real election, if we do say so ourselves.)

So as you make your way around the Convio Summit this week, you might see some folks wearing “Vote 2012” stickers carrying iPads asking you to send a message to Gene. That’s what this is about! And since grassroots organizing doesn’t happen exclusively online, this campaign has some offline elements as well – palm cards, talking points for canvassers, signs, and even a picture of Gene in the autoresponder so you Summit attendees can recognize him and talk up the campaign when you run into him.

Think of the benefits to your nonprofit organization using this mobile recruiter form at events versus the old-school way of using a physical clipboard and a piece of paper:

The message to the target is sent immediately – compared to “probably never” for old-school petitions

An autoresponder is sent immediately – versus never

The constituent record is created in Convio immediately – versus a probable lag of 1-3 months for a clipboard petition

A welcome series begins immediately – versus 1-3 months, if at all

And the reaction to the first email that the activist receives: “Oh yeah, that’s the form I filled out today!” versus “Huh?”

And while we’re at it – where do YOU want the Convio Summit to be in 2012?